Entertainment History

In this book, Capa recounts his terrifying journey through the darkest battles of World War II and shares his memories of the men and women of the Allied forces who befriended, amused, and captivated him along the way. His photographs are masterpieces - John G. Morris, Magnum Photos' first executive editor, called Capa "the century's greatest battlefield photographer" - and his writing is by turns riotously funny and deeply moving.

Colour unlocks the history of the colours of the rainbow, and reveals how paints came to be invented, discovered, traded and used. This remarkable and beautifully written book, part travelogue part narrative history, remembers a time when red paint was really the colour of blood, when orange was the poison pigment, blue as expensive as gold and yellow made from the urine of cows force-fed with mangoes. It looks at how green was carried by yaks along the silk road, and how an entire nation was founded on the colour purple.

While the Civil War raged in America, another very different revolution was beginning to take shape across the Atlantic, in the studios of Paris. The artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showing their first paintings amid scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment. Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been, at its inception, quite so controversial.

From Steven Adler, the original drummer for Guns N' Roses, comes My Appetite for Destruction, the inside story of GNR. Offering a different perspective from the bestselling Slash, Adler chronicles his life with the band, and own intense struggle with addiction, as seen on Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab and Sober House.

From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens is a violent and introspective memoir that reveals not only 50 Cent's story but the story of a generation of youth faced with hard choices and very little options. It is a tale of sacrifice, transformation, and redemption, but it is also one of hope, determination, and the power of self. Told in 50's own unique voice, the narrative drips with the raw insight, street wisdom, and his struggle to survive at all costs.

Stephen Sondheim died on November 26, 2021, but for countless fans around the world, he is “still here,” to quote one of his lyrics. With acclaimed revivals of his landmark shows occurring around the world and introducing new generations to the man who transformed American musical theater, Sondheim’s legacy has only grown. What is it about such classic songs as “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy, “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music, and “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods that speaks to us so intimately and profoundly?

Since 1929, Hollywood’s brightest stars have flocked to the Chateau Marmont as if it were a second home. An apartment building-turned-hotel, the Chateau has been the backdrop for generations of gossip and folklore: where director Nicholas Ray slept with his 16-year-old Rebel Without a Cause star Natalie Wood; Jim Morrison swung from the balconies; John Belushi suffered a fatal overdose; and Lindsay Lohan got the boot after racking up nearly $50,000 in charges in less than two months. Much of what has happened inside the Chateau’s walls has eluded the public eye - until now.

From Broadway debuts to landmark productions. Score a front row seat to hear hundreds of stories about the most important stages in the world, seen through the eyes of the producers, actors, stage hands, writers, musicians, company managers, dressers, designers, directors, ushers, and door men who bring The Great White Way to life each night. You'll never look at Broadway the same way again.

The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From the Next Generation to J. J. Abrams is an incisive, no-holds-barred oral history telling the story of post-Original Series Star Trek, told exclusively by the people who were there, in their own words - sharing the inside scoops they've never told before, unveiling the oftentimes shocking true story of the history of Star Trek, and chronicling the trials, tribulations, and tribbles that have remained deeply buried secrets until now.

By the early 1960s nearly everybody paying attention to country music agreed that George Jones was the greatest country singer of all time. After taking honky-tonk rockers like “White Lightning” all the way up the country charts, he revealed himself to be an unmatched virtuoso on “She Thinks I Still Care,” thus cementing his status as a living legend. That’s where the trouble started.

In this new audiobook, broadcaster and music writer Alan Cross narrates the definitive history of Pearl Jam. Cross succeeds once again in revealing the fascinating history behind the music in the same compelling way we've come to expect from his long broadcasting career.

What makes us fall in love with a song? What makes us want to write our own songs? Do songs help? Do songs help us live better lives? And do the lives we live help us write better songs? After two New York Times bestsellers that cemented and expanded his legacy as one of America’s best-loved performers and songwriters, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) and How to Write One Song, Jeff Tweedy is back with another disarming, beautiful, and inspirational book about why we listen to music, why we love songs, and how music can connect us to each other and to ourselves.

In this conclusion to his trilogy of authoritative books on Canada's most beloved and successful rock band, Martin Popoff takes us through three decades of "life at the top" for Rush's Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart. Though this era begins with the brisk-selling Roll the Bones and sees throngs of fans sell out international tours, there is also unimaginable tragedy.

In Montparnasse begins on the eve of the First World War and ends with the 1936 unveiling of Dalí’s Lobster Telephone. As those extraordinary years unfolded, the Surrealists found ever more innovative ways of exploring the interior life, and asking new questions about how to define art. In Montparnasse recounts how this artistic revolution came to be amidst the salons and cafés of that vibrant neighborhood.

With astounding access to all the key players of the time, including members of Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and many others, renowned music writer Ian Winwood at last gives this significant, substantive, and compelling story its due. Punk rock bands were never truly successful or indeed truly famous, and that was that - until it wasn't. Smash! is the story of how the underdogs finally won and forever altered the landscape of mainstream music.

These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Vasari, who invented the term "Renaissance", was the first to outline the influential theory of Renaissance art that traces a progression through Giotto, Brunelleschi, and finally the titanic figures of Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael.

Thousands of people have heard Kris "Tanto" Paronto speak about his experiences in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. But before he was a security contractor, Tanto was a US Army Ranger from Second Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment. Rangers are trained to lead by being pushed to their physical and mental limits so that they can perform against impossible odds in punishing situations. In The Ranger Way, Tanto shares stories from his training experiences that played a role in his team's heroic response in Benghazi.

From the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28th June 1914, to the peace treaty signing in Versailles five years later, this recording charts the extraordinary conflct that was WW1. The war to end all wars' was a terrible human tragedy on an unprecedented scale. The programme includes all of the major events, actions, and personalities that decided the course of the conflict.

“I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too.” Inspired by these few words, spoken by Josephine Baker at the 1963 March on Washington, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow and best-selling author Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space

Discovered at last, the legendary lost manuscript of Grateful Dead co-founder and primary lyricist Robert Hunter, written in the early 1960s—a wry, richly observed, and enlightening remembrance of “the scene” in Palo Alto that gave rise to an incredible partnership of Hunter and Jerry Garcia, and then to the Grateful Dead itself—with a Foreword by John Mayer, an Introduction by Dennis McNally, and an Afterword by Brigid Meier.